SU-Siena Recap

The holiday season is in full swing (and has been since Labor Day) so surely you have heard that radio commercial by now for the "International Star Registry" where you can name a star after someone.

(Dennis Nett/The Post-Standard)

Well, after last night's thrilling debut, someone head to this website and pony up the $54 to officially get a "Jonny Flynn" up there in the sky.

Jim Boeheim agrees. Sort of.

When pressed about Flynn's debut in his post game presser, Boeheim said with a smirk...

"Well he was good...I mean what do you want me to say? I said he was good. What do you want? It's one game. Give him a gold star."

No one was surprised to hear Mike Veley call Jonny Flynn's name over the PA in the starting lineup last night. Not only did it seem inevitable that Flynn was going to overtake Josh Wright's position, but with Wright missing all that practice time with his...*cough*..."ankle injury"...*cough* you knew Flynn had the lead on grabbing the starting nod.

Well he has it, and he's not looking back now. His good friend and former Niagara Falls teammate Paul Harris says we can look forward to more of what we saw last night.

"I've seen that plenty of times. Not at this level, but I remember he was a freshman and he had a big game like that in a tournament. I told him, just keep shooting. That's what he did and he hit 'em. He's got more of that coming"

To quote Terrell Owens, "getcha popcorn ready."

One game, one record

With his 28-point performance, Flynn set a freshman record for points in a debut with his performance vs Siena. He beat the record previously held by...wait for it....Carmelo Anthony.

Poor guy didn't even get a chance to hit the showers he was swarmed with so much media after the game. Thanks to Jonny for hanging around to talk to me. Here is what he said about his big game.

On his big debut...

"It's something you dream about coming to play in the Carrier Dome and having a good game like that. My teammates got me the ball in open positions, deferred alot of their shots to get me in a position to score. My teammates and my coaching staff put me in the position so I could score."

On such a close game to start the season..

"It's good. The first two exhibition games we had...the St.Rose game was a close game and in the second game (Lemoyne) we came out and learned from our mistakes, a complete turnaround from the first game. Hopefully we can do that with St.Joe's. We'll break down the film tonight and look at all the little things and come out for St.Joe's ready tomorrow."

Notice the assumption SU would play St.Joseph's as at the time I talked to Jonny, the St.Joe's-Fairleigh Dickinson game was just starting. Don't read too much into it. I think it was just a Freudian slip on Jonny's part

Now the bad stuff

Everyone expected this young team to have some issues early. Here are those issues.

Defense

In a word...yikes. There were times, in fact many of them, that Siena put a shot up without a hand even near in their face. There are alot of things I could point out right now (guys out of position, not hustling, didn't have their hands up, etc), but why waste the time? The whole thing just has to get better.

One has only to glance at these stats to put a finger on how lacking the defense was.

Points in the Paint:

Siena 44
Syracuse 42

2nd chance points:

Siena 25
Syracuse 16

Siena even beat Syracuse at their own game by getting more points on the fast break (22-20).

Cue Boeheim.

"Our defense has been a struggle for us and it certainly was tonight. I thought at times we had stretches, little bit in the 1st half when we got on a roll where we stopped them, and then in the 2nd half it got close, we made a couple real good defensive stands, but that's about it. We're going to have to get better on defense."

I asked Paul Harris what Boeheim said to the team about their defense before he talked to us media guys. He just smiled and said..."I can't tell you that."

Defense is one of those things you can practice until you are blue in the face, it just has to be worked out in live game action. Having so many games early will help the coaches figure out just how to fix the leaky defense so far.

Turnovers

Syracuse committed 23 turnovers which led to 26 Siena points. Do you need me to add anything to that?

Who's the man?

Obviously, Jonny Flynn is emphatically raising his hand right now. But there were times that Eric Devendorf brought the ball up the floor and was calling out the signals in key spots. The sooner Devo just lets Flynn run the point to let him focus on getting open to make plays, the better
Paul Harris taking ill-advised jumpshots

I'm afraid we may have to learn to live with this one. I'm not going to rip a guy too hard who grabs 15 boards, but he seems to be hell bent on proving he can shoot the ball.

and the biggest "duh" of them all...

Inexperience.

All that said, this team hung tough and held off a Siena team that just wouldn't die. Once they cut back on the turnovers and learn to play some 'D...well, to quote Greg Robinson, "we're heading in the right direction."

The Boeheim Report

Boeheim took a loooooong time to get to the press room and only spoke for four minutes and 30 seconds, taking just four questions from the media before departing for the night. It wasn't worth the wait.

But, none the less, here are some quotes from James Arthur Boeheim.UPDATE: Watch the presser by clicking here

On the 2nd half...

"We started out the 2nd half, we just weren't ready to play. I think young guys, they are up by 14 points, they think that is a big deal. That's nothing. Seton Hall had a 20-point lead at home the other night and ended up going to overtime. It's nothing. 14 points is nothing, they don't understand that. They just came out flat, made a couple bad plays, couple bad passes...but Jonny picked us up. He made the three three's, but then they still let them back in it. It's hard to be happy about the offensive end when the defense was so bad"

On whether he expected alot of turnovers early in the season with such a young group...

"You can't make that many turnovers, for sure. But we've started that way, we've had games and teams that are making alot of turnovers. Some of them were good defensive plays, but some of them were just awful, awful plays."

Is this young team still learning, especially the zone defense?

"Right now they are learning alot. I wouldn't say there is one thing they can be comfortable with right now. A positive, we shot the ball well, but nobody is guarding you it's not that hard sometimes to make shots. Defense was awful. It's gotta be alot better tomorrow whoever we play."

This, that, and the other thing

*Jim Boeheim is now 28-4 in season debuts. Not too shabby

*Rick Jackson had a quiet, but solid effort, with 8 points and 3 boards in his 9 minutes. I still think his game is very raw (you can almost see him counting his steps out there) but he has a nice touch around the basket and it's good Boeheim looks like he wants to find him minutes where he can.

*A familiar name is in The Dome for the two days of the NIT on the St.Joe's side of things. Joe Lunardi, yes "Mr.Bracketology" himself, is a radio announcer for the Hawks.

*With the NIT running the show for this tournament, there were no commercials during stops in play, just music. Maybe we can convince them to stick around to run the show all year.

*TK99's expanded pregame show got off to a roaring start when a very audible "Oh *bleep*!!" could be heard in the backround of an interview Gene Waldron was doing with Eric Devendorf.

*For those of you keeping track at home, this is the 107th season of Syracuse University Basketball.

*First game attendance: 17,746. Actual "butts in seats" count was probably 14,000-15,000 and some change.

*The student section was plenty full and they were dressed in Orange, but you can tell they are in early season form themselves. Some guys tried to get the whole jump up and down and yell "0hhhhhhhh" thing going (like the Cameron Crazies do), but not even 10% of the students joined in. Come on guys and gals, your parents aren't spending $40,000 for you to go here to be so out of sync!

So, what did we learn kids?

All in all, I think we got a nice little microcosm in this game of what the 2007-'08 season is going to be. Alot of fun to watch, but a team with alot to learn as well.